Saturday, November 05, 2005

Former American fugitive Marc Rich was a middleman for several of Iraq's suspect oil deals in February 2001, just one month after his pardon from President Clinton, according to oil industry shipping records obtained by ABC News.

RD mentioned: "There was a large amount of money that changed hands. I don't have any proof of it"

The former wife of the fugitive financier controversially pardoned by President Clinton on his last day in office had donated $450,000 to his presidential library fund, according to reports in Washington.

Citing "sources familiar with the contribution", the Washington Post said Denise Rich made three donations from July 1998 to May 2000, before she became active late last year in the successful lobbying campaign for Marc Rich.

The pardon freed one of the world's richest men from prosecution on more than 50 counts of racketeering, wire fraud, income tax evasion and illegal oil trading with Iran.

Her lawyer had told a house committee probing the pardon that Denise Rich donated an "enormous sum of money" to the fund.

Reports of the donations have ranged from $400,000 to $1 million.

Ms Rich, who has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Democratic Party in recent years, refused to answer 14 written questions submitted to her by the committee, claiming her constitutional protection against self-incrimination.

Clinton foundation attorney David Kendall said he would fight a subpoena for the library donor list saying, "Any demand for a list of our donors would be flagrantly violative of the First Amendment and we would resist it.

They also noted that Ms Rich was a major contributor to Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate campaign.

HERE IS THE KICKER! KEEP THE NEWS OF RICH'S ILLEGAL DEALINGS WITH SADDAM IN MIND:

Mr Clinton insisted on Tuesday that Mr Rich deserved the pardon. saying: "Once the facts are out there, people will understand what I did and why, even if they may not agree with it."

Democrats opposed the removal of Saddam Hussein, and they took fat cash from people who were content to do business with the butcher of Baghdad AND IRAN!!!! Bill Clinton, John "Let's give Iran nuclear fuel to test them." Kerry, and their fellow Democrats sell their country out to those who would see it destroyed! LET'S INVESTIGATE THEM!

Rioting in Paris is on it's ninth day. It's amazing to me that 1) all the French government can do is wring their heads and whine "Can't we all get along?"

I knew the French government was corrupt and incompetent, but having the level of incompetence exposed is a shock. Much like the heat-wave deaths of a couple summers ago, the French government has been exposed as the whimpering, jelly-spined cowards and crooks they truly are. And this is the country the Left wants to emulate?

No thanks. I'll keep my spine just where it is.

In other news, you might remember the name Marc Rich. He's the slimeball who bought a was given a pardon by Bill Clinton just before Clinton left office.

Former American fugitive Marc Rich was a middleman for several of Iraq's suspect oil deals in February 2001, just one month after his pardon from President Clinton, according to oil industry shipping records obtained by ABC News.

And a U.S. criminal investigation is looking into whether Rich, as well as several other prominent oil traders, made illegal payments to Iraq in order to obtain the lucrative oil contracts.

I know that this is an old story, but I just saw it on the news last night for the first time, and I thought that maybe other people hadn't seen it either. But the whole reason I bring this up is to simply highlight the link between the Clintons and corruption.

Everything Clinton touched was corrupted. He was very careful about not letting a direct link between the crime and himself be connected, but it's always one or two people away. Why would Clinton pardon a white collar criminal with no obvious ties to anyone that Clinton knew? Out of the sheer goodness of his heart? Did Clinton pick Rich's name out of a hat and say "Golly gee, I'm gonna pardon him today!"

Hell no. There was a large amount of money that changed hands. I don't have any proof of it, but either Clinton was paid for Rich's pardon, or he's the stupidest man on the face of the earth. And of course, once Rich recieved his pardon, he went right back into the business of crime and corruption.

Disgusting.

Anyways, I just wanted to write that down before I collapsed. I'm sick as a dog and trying to get better. Vick's VaporRub is my friend right now, as well as the drugs that TMC gave me when I went in on Monday.

Bleah. I always seem to get sick around the Sep-Nov time frame every damn year. Think it's my body telling me to lay down?

Friday, November 04, 2005

Why another? Because 2 investigations into pre-war intelligence on Iraq's WMD have already concluded with the following:

First the Bi-Partisan Senate Intelligence Committee produced a UNANIMOUSLY APPROVED Pre-War Intelligence Report in June of 2004 which found as one of it's conclusions (number 83) that:

The Committee did not find any evidence that Administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities.

Co-Chairman and Democrat Charles Robb said investigators examined every allegation "to see if there was any occasion where a member of the administration or anyone else had asked an analyst or anyone else associated with the intelligence community to change a position they were taking or whether they felt there was any undue influence. And we found absolutely no instance."

And in November of 2005, AGAIN, Democrats Hopes of Undermining the Iraq War and a Republican President rest on baseless allegations of lies being told in order to get us into the Iraq war. WHY!? Because THIS IS ALL THEY HAVE LEFT! They have NO AGENDA that they can openly promote and they have lead their supporters so far out into left field with their opposition to the war in Iraq that the simply must find some way to substantiate THEIR LIES, MISREPRESENTATIONS, AND SPIN. Selling their soul to MoveondotNEVER and the Kos Kidz has a price, and the Democrats will be paying it for a long long time to come.

BLITZER: Even though some of your supporters... they say your decision and your wife's decision to let her be photographed represented a major mistake because if there were people out there who may have been endangered by her name certainly when people might have seen her picture, they would have been further endangered.

WILSON: Her contacts and her network was endangered the minute Bob Novak wrote the article. The photograph of her did not identify her in any way anybody could identify.To give you an indication of how effortlessly this guy lies, CNN was at that moment displaying the Vanity Fair photo of Wilson and Plame on a huge screen right behind him. So Wilson was asserting that no foreign intelligence service would be clever enough to see through the sunglasses-and-scarf "disguise" Plame is wearing in the photo.

WILSON: Let me just get this very clear. When one is faced with adversity, one of the ways that one acts in the face of adversity is to try and bring a certain amount of humor to the situation. It's called irony. And uh, if uh, people have no sense of humor or no sense of perspective on that, my response is it's about time to get a life. But in no way did that picture endanger anybody. What endangered people was the outing of her name, her maiden name, and subsequently the outing of the corporation she worked for...

BLITZER: So you don't have any regrets about the Vanity Fair picture?

WILSON: I think it's a great picture. I think...

BLITZER: It's a great picture, but I mean...

WILSON: I think someday it too will be in the International Spy Museum.

"HUMOR"!?! "IRONY"!?! What happened to "chopping off her right arm"?! I thought she was "still employed" by the CIA "and has obligations to her employer." "HUMOR"!?! "IRONY"?!?

July 2005:

"She's still employed" by the CIA "and has obligations to her employer." "She would rather chop off her right arm than say anything to the press and she will not allow herself to be photographed." "HUMOR" "IRONY"

Wait a tick! This poor poor poooooor woman's "cover" has been blown, her career is ruined.....right?

"She's still employed" by the CIA "and has obligations to her employer." Right?

Drilling supporters said developing the refuge's 10.4 billion barrels of crude would raise $2.4 billion in leasing fees for the government, reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil imports and create thousands of American jobs.

"America wants a better energy plan than putting a sweetheart deal (for oil companies) in the budget," said Democrat Maria Cantwell of Washington, who was the main sponsor the amendment to strike the drilling language."

There was a vote on the motion to suspend the rules and adopt the bill, which required a 2/3 majority. The measure had a 225-182 vote, which suggests that it could yet pass. The vote indicates which party favors free speech; the Republicans voted in favor, 179 to 38, while the Democrats opposed the measure, 143 to 46.

"I was part of that wild and crazy Class of '94 that shook the political landscape by taking over the House after more than 50 years of unfettered Democrat control. We came to Washington full of ideals and conviction. But sadly, what they say about absolute power is coming to reality in the 2005 GOP Washington. Republicans in just 10 years have developed the arrogance it took the Democrats 30 years to develop."

I know that The Valiant Elephant and I have had our disagreements over the current state of the Republican party. That's fine. One of the things that makes the Republicans better than the Democrats is that people like the two of use can agree to disagree without throwing huge protests and torching police cars. If you make one small move out of the Democrat's plantation, they throw everything they've got at you.

TVE had a whole list of reasons of why we vote (R). I can't disagree with any of 'em. However, there are just as many points as to why the Republicans are no longer a conservative party.

Spending - the federal budget keeps growing and growing, even though we don't have the money to fill it.Immigration - Our borders are wide open, end of story. Politicians from both sides of the political isle are talking about "amnesty", as if that would do a damn thing to stop the flow of people over our borders.Constitutional Rights - Can anyone say McCain-Feingold? I can. And take a look at what the bastards are cooking up now.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Online political expression should not be exempt from campaign finance law, the House decided Wednesday as lawmakers warned that the Internet has opened up a new loophole for uncontrolled spending on elections. . . .

The vote in effect clears the way for the FEC to move ahead with court-mandated rule-making to govern political speech and campaign spending on the Internet.

You're telling me that with a Republican majority in the house and Senate, and a Republican president, we can't even pass a bill that re-emphasizes the fact that political speech on the internet is still unregulated?

The fact that we're even talking about the possibility of speech on the internet being regulated shows me just how far we've fallen. The Founding Fathers of this country would be spinning in their graves so damn fast if they knew just what the hell the so-called leaders of this country were doing to it. The very same country that states a crucifix in a bottle of human urine is protected under free speech is debating whether or not I should be able to tell you what I think about a politician. How would you like to show up here in November of '08 and see..............nothing?

Now, let me make this clear from the get-go - I will not do anything that will let the Democrats take control of the government. Not on my watch. I can bitch and complain and scream about the Republicans all I want to, but the simple fact is that right now they're all we have left. I'd rather castrate myself with a belt sander than allow the socialist-communist party to get their hands on the wheel yet again. The last time a Democrat was in office, our military was gutted and cut in half, terrorists were allowed to flourish, and more and more freedoms were being eroded away in the name of the "common good". The time before that, we had double-digit inflation, gas lines, and a group of Americans held hostage until a conservative was voted into the Oval Office.

The Democrats before that got us into the Viet Nam War.

Just remember Hillary Clinton's words - "We're going to take things away from you for the common good". Those words should chill your heart. They cannot be allowed to succeed.

That being said, we have a big, big problem on our hands. It's getting to the point where I have to hold my nose in order to vote Republican, yet that's entirely preferable to the vomiting and dry heaving I'd go through if I ever voted Democrat. We have a year or so before the next elections for Congress.

It's time we demanded that our Representatives do what we elected them to do. Their fucking jobs.

I did not help elect a Republican majority so that I could see them sit on their ass and go along for the pork-barreled ride. I didn't help elect a Republican majority so that we could all watch the Democrats block every bit of a conservative agenda with temper-tantrums and hissy-fits on the floor of the Capitol Building. I didn't help elect a Republican majority so that the very threat of an unconstitutional filibuster by the feces-flinging monkey of the Left stalls judicial nominees for weeks, months or years.

I didn't help elect a Republican majority so that Teddy "girl, what girl?" Kennedy could write our educational legislation.

We can't jump overboard on the Republicans, but we can hold their feet to the fire. Write your legislators. Tell them that you're tired of the games and bullshit coming out of Washington D.C., and let them know that while you won't vote for a Democrat, you don't have to vote for the incumbent during the next primary either. Let them know that you won't vote them out for holding the Democrats responsible for their actions, you'll vote them out for letting the minority party run roughshod over the rest of the country. If the Republicans won't do what we elected them to do, then maybe it's time for some new conservatives to take over the Republican's seat.

While nearly everyone questioned (never-been-Judge) Harriet Miers' qualifications for the SCOTUS, nobody, and I mean nobody, is doubting Alito's qualifications as a seasoned judge well-tested in Constitutional law. He has more experience on the federal bench than any Supreme Court nominee since before FDR was president. We have 15 years of court opinions written by this guy to look at, he has argued 12 cases before the Supreme Court (Miers - zero SCOTUS cases), so I don't want to hear one squeak out of Chucky Cheez Schumer, who said,

"As for Judge Alito, there is still a lot to be learned about him,"

until he has spent the time necessary to peruse Alito's well-documented 15 years of court opinion from the Third District US Court of Appeals.

But, we get to hear lots of ranting and raving, from all the right (i.e., leftist) people, and I'm loving it. Check out Harry Reid, who supported the Miers nomination:

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Monday that he is "disappointed" in the pick of Alito in that he is not a "consensus nominee" and said one day earlier that that nominee would "create a lot of problems."..."Conservative activists forced Miers to withdraw from consideration for this same Supreme Court seat because she was not radical enough for them," he continued. "Now the Senate needs to find out if the man replacing Miers is too radical for the American people."

"Every American should be deeply concerned that the far right wing, which prevented Harriet Miers from even receiving a Senate hearing, is celebrating Judge Alito's nomination and urging the Senate to rubber stamp the swing vote on our rights and liberties."

With his choice of Judge Samuel Alito as Supreme Court nominee, President Bush tried to reassure his political base. But he may also have lost a chance to reach out to other voters when he abandoned the idea of choosing a woman or minority for the court.

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Philadelphia Flyers' Kim Johnsson shows his broken tooth on the tip of his tongue to referee Blaine Angus after being hit by the stick of Montreal Canadiens' Mike Ribeiro during second period NHL action in Montreal, Tuesday, October 25, 2005. (CP PHOTO/Francois Roy)

Chris Matthews was actually pretty hard on Howard Dean last night on Hardball. I note these two exchanges:

DEAN : Third of all, I am concerned about Judge Alito's record. Judge Alito in one case said he believed that Congress did not have the right to regulate the sale of machine guns. I think that's a mistake.

MATTHEWS: I thought they had done that since the '30s. Tommy guns have been outlawed since the mob days back in the early '30s.

DEAN: In a case when he was on the court, he dissented from an opinion that upheld Congress' right to regulate machine guns. In other words, he made the case, in a dissent, that he did not believe that Congress had the right to regulate the sales of machine guns.

MATTHEWS: Automatic weapons?

DEAN: Yes. Machine guns.

Then, minutes later:

MATTHEWS: The Democrats, your party, is a pro-choice party?

DEAN: No. My party respects everybody's views, but my party firmly believes that the government should stay out of people's personal lives. ...MATTHEWS: Do you believe in abortion rights?

DEAN: I believe that the government should stay out of the personal lives of families and women. They should stay out of our lives. That's what I believe.

My dad and I were dying for Matthews to go for it with this query:

MATTHEWS: "Do you believe a husband should be able to sell his wife a machine gun?"

Alas, but they just went to spot.

After the break, Dean trotted out this whopper:

DEAN: Well, I don't know who did, but somebody did, because the case wasn't there, and the 9/11 Commission said it wasn't there. The 9/11 Commission, chaired by a Republican, I might add, said there was no connection between terrorism and Saddam Hussein.

Have you noticed how Lefties indulge in casual profanity, even in the most inappropriate places? I have some theories about this, but with just one semester of Psych, I should probably keep them to myself.

Actually, isn't that what good manners is all about? Putting the comfort of others before your own impulses is what normal people do. Otherwise, you just look sloppy.

I clean out the guestbook a few times a month to keep the drug and casino spam to a minumum. But one drug spam I always see is phent--ermine. (yeah, I put the dashes there to keep spam-bots away).

What the hell is it?

UPDATE: Nevermind. Diet crap. Got it.

What the hell good does all that spam do, anyways? Do people actually go to those sites? I've seen spam linkage for three or four different things in one spam post, and none of the spam items have anything to do with each other.

If I had to name one word that would describe my philosophy on modern life, it would be "technophobe". Quite honestly, if it has moving parts, it can break. The more moving parts a thing has, the easier it is to break.

Think about this for a moment: My father, when I was growing up, had a 1976 Ford F250 pickup truck. V8 engine. Both my father and I could sit on the wheelwells INSIDE THE HOOD and work on that engine. Should it start to rain, we could lower the hood a bit while we were still inside it, hang a light on the hood latch and continue working. All we needed to tune that truck up was a socket wrench, the various sized sockets, an oil filter wrench, and the parts that were going to be replaced.

Now fast forward a decade. Just changing the sparkplugs on my 1988 Nissan pickup requires a degree in spacial engineering. I needed a socket wrench, the socket, a hinge joint, and two different extentions just to get to the rear sparkplug. Don't even get me started on the belts, hoses, fuel injectors, what have you. It's a royal pain in the ass. More moving parts.

In any case, I have been asked several times why I don't go get a digital camera. "More Moving Parts" is my normal response. But there's more to it than that.

Let's start with the fact that if I were to buy my same exact camera new today, I would have to spend several thousand dollars for the camera and lenses that I have. Add in my tripler, and you can tack on a few hundred more. I don't have an all-in-one automatic camera, I've got the full SLR with three different lenses and a tripler for those really far far away shots.

Trying to replace everything I have with a digital set up would cost me over five thousand dollars. That's a lot of clams. Mebbe in a few years when the prices come down, I'll think about it.

But anyways, switching to just a plain digital camera is out of the question for me, because there are too many things that a regular camera just can't do. Controlling shutter speed, for instance.

It was Helly's picture of Mars that made me remember this picture of mine. I took it when I was driving to my parent's house. I looked up, and saw the moon sitting over a group of trees. I set my camera up on a tripod, set the shutter speed to manual, and then held the shutter open with a cable release for five seconds.

Can't do that with a digital camera. Not with the basic models, in any case. Want more shutter-speed fun?

Pioneer Square at night. Once again, camera, tripod, cable shutter release and shutter speed on manual. This was a three second exposure.

I mentioned the lenses I had, didn't I? Some wildlife shots you just can't get close to. Lake Coeur d'Alene hosts flocks of Bald Eagles in December and January, when the Kokanee salmon are spawning. The eagles come down for a while to chow down on fish before continuing South.

That particular bird was sitting in a tree about one hundred yards from my position. I have a 70-210 zoom lens that I stacked with my tripler in order to get this shot. To the naked eye, it was barely a speck. But add enough magnification, and voila! Unfortunately, you can't stack lenses on a regular camera

One more shot just for kicks....

I got this shot while visiting my aunt and uncle in Ft. Lewis, WA. I had to open up the apature all the way in order to get enough light through the fog. You can't adjust apature settings on a regular camera, because a regular camera has a fixed apature.

So anyways, there are four pictures I couldn't have taken with a regular camera. Pictures like this are the reason I'm waiting until prices come down to switch to digital. I've got quite a few more, obviously, but I don't want to overload any computers by posting tons of photos. I've also shrank these four down by at least 50% so that I don't mess up the blog paramiters. If you like the photo and you want the full sized image, email me and I'll email it back to you.

I hate being sick. However, I woke up this morning with the sensation that the left half of my head was stuffed with cotton and dwarves. Dwarves who were jabbing needles into my eardrum and sinuses.

So, it's off to sickcall I go. Sinus infection.

The good news is that I caught it early on, so that it didn't have a chance to spread and really get nasty. Yay. The bad news is that I've got two prescriptions and three OTC medications that I get to take.

At least I'm not going to miss a week's worth of work. Just a little time to let the antibiotics kick in, and then I'm back to the grindstone. Honestly, I don't mind working. It's sitting at home bored off my ass that drives me nuts. That's one of the main reasons I hate to get sick. I'd much rather feel a little bad while I work than feel icky sitting on my couch going out of my head with bordom.

Ah well. Tomorrow's another day, one where I'm hopefully not hocking green crap out of my nose.

"Since 1977, governments collected more than $1.34 trillion, after adjusting for inflation, in gasoline tax revenues—more than twice the amount of domestic profits earned by major U.S. oil companies during the same period."

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Die Frauenkirche once again dominates the Dresden skyline. The church was reduced to ruble and stayed that way under the communist regime. After reunification, an international effort raised $217 million for the reconstruction. Many of the ruined bits from the original have been built into the new structure as a remembrance.

We have all heard the story and controversy of how Dresden was leveled in 1945. The firestorm killed 35,000 pople. Many feel that level of destruction was uncalled for, but that's over my head. My question is: Can we get our 75,603 troops out of German now? If they can recreate this magnificent monument to peace, it's time to end the occupation.

Slip on a jacket, it's chilly outside. And Mars is near--just 43 million miles away.

If you have ever been curious about the planets, go look. Nothing else in the night sky is nearly so bright. Even if you live under a street light, I am offering my personal money-back guarantee that you will find it.

Early in the evening, look east over Taurus. Later, Mars will arc high to the south, and Orion will come up under Taurus. This is the best show in the Autumn nights.

And remember, we still have two fully functional rovers buzzing around up there.